[Burkeman1]

Appeasment? Europe and America have armed forces and prop up dictators all over the Middle East. The terrorism we experience is a direct result of our being there in the first place. What Spain did in the last election is hardly "appeasement". It is reality. Would over 200 Spainards have been dead if they did not have troops in Iraq and backed the USA? Yes or No? Would 3000 Americans have been murdered on 9/11 if we didn't have troops in Saudi Arabia and backed dictators all over that region? No. And that is not "blaming America" as Buchanan so ruffed up the stupid Hannity on his own radio show today.

[Adrastus]

Remarkable. Did you read the article or just come to those conclusions before hand to save time?

[Publius6961]

Thank you for sharing your wisdom again. I wish I had a parakeet so I could print out that collection of ignorant opinion and put it to good use.

[Steve Eisenberg]

Would 3000 Americans have been murdered on 9/11 if we didn't have troops in Saudi Arabia and backed dictators all over that region?

The first thing Saddam did when he took power 30 years ago was to murder the head of Iraq Coca-Cola, torturing his number two and then returning the broken man to his family pour encourager les autres. This was not because we did anything to Saddam, but because we are who we are and he is who he is. As the world #1 power we are fated to be the world's #1 target regardless of what we do, and the weaker we appear the more attactive we appear as a target. This is quite a different situation from Spain, which may well have made itself safer through its appeasement.

While I don't like proping up dictators, if we had a hand-off attitude towards the Middle East, the great majority of its oil would be in Saddam's gas-stained, America-hating hands. For better or worse, no electable president would allow this.

[swilhelm73]

Had we followed the road of appeasement and surrender you seem to advocate following the Cold War (and was that your solution to the Cold War too?), Osama Bin Laden would currently control Saudi Arabia. He would have nuclear weapons. He would have a real army. He would also have much of the world's oil wealth.

Whether he would first start a nuclear war to destroy Israel, or use nuclear blackmail and terrorism on Europe to force them to be even more accepting of Islamism so as to speed the coming of Eurarabia isn't sure.

What is sure is that both of those possibilities would be horrible for America and for the world. Certainly, the perpetrators of the "tragedy of Andalusia" in the words of Osama Bin Laden, aka Spain, would be especially targeted.

Well one immediate goal of AQ was to remove America, and the Saudi monarchy, from Saudi Arabia, this was hardly the extent of their ambition. And every surrender and withdrawal by the west has spurred them on. We could, of course, bury our heads in the sand, as several European states have done, and hope the terrorists just go away and the historical record of how such a policy works be damned.

Fortunately for us, and the world outside of the Islamists, we Americans are made of sterner stuff.

[ModelBreaker]

Appeasment? Europe and America have armed forces and prop up dictators all over the Middle East. The terrorism we experience is a direct result of our being there in the first place. What Spain did in the last election is hardly "appeasement". It is reality. Would over 200 Spainards have been dead if they did not have troops in Iraq and backed the USA? Yes or No? Would 3000 Americans have been murdered on 9/11 if we didn't have troops in Saudi Arabia and backed dictators all over that region? No. And that is not "blaming America" as Buchanan so ruffed up the stupid Hannity on his own radio show today.

Deeply wrong in so many regards. The combination of Wahibbism and oil money was going to produce Madrassas in some form. The precise form it took was the price the house of Saud paid for political power. But if it had been a group of gansters with a name other than Saud, the result is the same.

The Madrassas radicalized Islamic youth all over the world. That radicalization produced OBL. But if not OBL, then someone else with the same twisted, dark-age perspective on things.

Posed as you state, who knows if 911 would have happened on that date or 311 on that. Do I have any doubt that radical islam would have decided to destroy the west at some point--maybe sooner, maybe later--once the vicious Wahabbi creed was merged will the oil trillions. None whatsoever. They tried, with partial success, to conquer Christendom for CENTURIES. Hundreds of years after being thrown out of Spain, they are still sulking about their loss (OBL isn't yanking you when he talks about the 'tragedy of andalusia.' Lepanto still grates on them as if it happened last week)

Can you really say with a straight face that this conflict was merely the product of a particular set of policies of the US that Pat Buchanan and Noam Chomsky don't like? This conflict has been coming our way ever since oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. That, combined with Islam's belief that it should rule the world, is far more important than details of US policy.

The two world cultures that are based on evangelical religions are now nose-to-nose. Our advantage is wealth and technology. Theirs is a singular lack of post-modern silliness, giving them a confidence in their cause that is frightening, combined with scavanged Western technologies that they may apply assymetrically--and time.

Pat and Noam want us to give up our advantage and go home. Pat hopes that Islam will change its 1300 years of history of expansionism by violence whenever they had the means to do so. I don't. Noam, of course, hopes that the west is destroyed.

In that regard, Pat's desire is, I think, based on Neville Chamberlin style wishful thinking about our opponents--thus, well intentioned but naive--with a little anti-semitism thrown in. Noam's is based on vicious hatred of his own country, which he would like to destroy. So while Pat is less morally culpable for his position than Noam, they are both profoundly wrong.

[MegaSilver]

Appeasment? Europe and America have armed forces and prop up dictators all over the Middle East. The terrorism we experience is a direct result of our being there in the first place. What Spain did in the last election is hardly "appeasement". It is reality. Would over 200 Spainards have been dead if they did not have troops in Iraq and backed the USA? Yes or No? Would 3000 Americans have been murdered on 9/11 if we didn't have troops in Saudi Arabia and backed dictators all over that region? No. And that is not "blaming America" as Buchanan so ruffed up the stupid Hannity on his own radio show today.

It is one thing to criticize U.S. foreign policy. Yes, we have made blunders. Yes, we have turned a blind eye to some of the world's worst horrors and helped exacerbate a pre-existing problem. No, we did NOT create the problem.

The problem with this kind of Paleoconservative rhetoric, as I see it, is that it leans too far toward ideological isolationism. As a Conservative, I tend to oppose injecting strong ideological sentiment into politis. (And yes, this does include ideological interventionism; I disagree with Neoconservatives on some points.) The present Middle East was always a disaster waiting to happen, and now that it's there, we have to do everything we can to eradicate the threat.

We made blunders in Iran last century. We made blunders in Afghanistan last century. We continue to sleep blindly with the devil that is Saudi Arabia. We ought to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. That said, militant Islam is here to stay, and retreating into a policy of isolationism will send the message that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. And keep in mind that this is a religion that, historically, has used every means possible to convert the world. Radical strains of Islam are simply inherited from the old orthodoxy of the prophet Mohammad.

[txhurl]

Europe and America have armed forces and prop up dictators all over the Middle East.

Guess what. China, when they REALLY get into automobiles, will be trying to prop up dictators all over the place there, too.

Friend, unless you can prove you are ONLY transported by bicycle - even buses make you a PETROphile antagonist - you are guilty of dictator-propping. Sorry.

[Axenolith]

You wouldn't need to have troops there if they weren't quick to leap on the bandwagon of the latest thug of the day. Lest you forget, they in general threw their lot in with the Axis and that is, in a large part, why they got hosed in the subsequent shuffling of borders...

Also, there is just not any way shape or form that such countries would be allowed to enjoy their oil resources subsequent to the world at large becoming "hooked" on it. If they're going to decide willy nilly that they can just occasionally turn it off then they need to expect someone is going to come asskicking, if not us then eventually a European power, the Chinese or the Indians.

[Fledermaus]

Sorry, the answers are YES! We would have had 9/11 here and 3/11 in Madrid REGARDLESS of anything we've ever done.

These people are fanatics, pure and simple. Their goal in life is to kill the infidels, period.

For goodness sakes, you have a short term view. Osama's excuses to kill over the last decade have covered centuries of history. Spain in 1492, crusades, Caliph stuff, yada, yada, yada. Then lately he starts on Palestine and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Mecca, blah, blah, blah.

It's all balderdash. He just wants to kill. Period. For some strange reason he gets off living in caves, nice ones for sure but not the Four Seasons, sitting around his kidney dialysis machine and listening to bad phone connections and trying to pick up news on CNN if it's safe while masturbating to pictures of goats.

Yes, he'll keep killing for the sheer fun of it and the reasons mean nothing. They know others like the left wing press will subscribe reasons to his moves. Or he'll put out some badly recorded cassette tape.

Personally, I think he's dead and has been since Tora Bora. I can't believe if he was alive he wouldn't have made some video or had some picture of him. Those tapes could have been made well before reading scripts with all kinds of scenarios. And the quality is so bad they could use other voices to make them sound current...or Osama never used his real voice in the tapes ever. What if every tape it was someone else that is still alive?

To think this is all because of actions of the recent past since World War one and two or the Cold War is mistaken in my opinion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, I think they just saw an opportunity to fill a vacuum and were successful enough in the 90's to pursue their terror.

But a new Sheriff came to town and they misjudged him.

[AmericanVictory]

Could you name these dictators we have backed of whom you speak in "that region?" And, while you're at it, please name the "non-dictators" whom, in your allknowingness, we should have backed.

[Zack Nguyen]

Would over 200 Spainards have been dead if they did not have troops in Iraq and backed the USA? Yes or No?

Quite possibly, but who can say. Islamists regard Spain as their territory, taken from the Moors centuries ago. In addition, the UN has hardly been a fan of the U.S.-led War on Terror, yet their Iraq installation got bombed as well. Terrorists hate without reason.

Would 3000 Americans have been murdered on 9/11 if we didn't have troops in Saudi Arabia and backed dictators all over that region? No.

Yes. Ultimately, bin Laden wants to kill us all because we are not Islamic, just like him. He didn't kill 3000 innocent people to get us out of Israel. After all, Palestine will get their state regardless. Bin Laden has few legitimate political objectives. You'll notice that he didn't present a list of "demands" after 9/11, as one might expect of a terrorist who hoped to achieve some political end. No, his language is peppered with "killing the infidel" language. He kills because he hates us.

[hershey]

Where would the Middle East be if the West didn't buy their oil? It's the only thing they have to sell other than carpets. And we had to show them how to drill for it, etc.. Let's say we got out yesterday, we invented cold fusion or whatever to heat houses and fuel cars, the Middle East would still hate us. They'd be reduced to eating sand. The problem with Islam is that it looks backward. Their culture is stagnant and worse.

Spain just begged terrorists to 'paint burquas on every Spanish butt', to paraphrase M. Steyn. As long as computers, TV, and movies exist, America be in every living room in the world with electricity and running water. Our culture isn't stagnant. We are a creative people...blame individual freedom for that. Every day we get up and invent something new that captivates the world and infuriates people like Osama bin Laden. We aren't about to change our nature, and you can't disinvent computers and mass communication.

Appeasement won't work long, and neither will blackmail. I wonder if that won't be the next trick out of the terrorist bag: threatening to bomb some European city if America doesn't give up the fight. Bombing America proper would only serve to enrage us and make us more determined to carry the battle to whatever rat-infested cave terrorists call home, this time with MOAB.

Plus, the terrorists' latest demands have gone way beyond America getting out of Saudi Arabia. Now they want to revisit the Crusades, et. al.. This time they want to conquer Europe, then the rest of the world, so where do we draw the line in the sand?

Do you think Kerry has the right idea and we should consult the UN for legitimacy on everything from soup to nuts? Some in the State department would go that route. I heard some nitwit general (McCaffrey?), on the radio...a CNN feed...yesterday, calling Powell a national treasure and advocating that we put him and State in charge of foreign policy as they'd involve the UN asap, never mind that the UN has been hijacked by a gang of thugs. The world is complicated, and made more so by our history in the Middle East, which hasn't always been lily-white. But we have to play the hand we're dealt, and appeasement won't work. By the way, McCaffrey, or whoever the general was, also said democracy would never take root in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East. Evidently he feels Muslims don't have enough brains to make it work. Funny, nobody called him a racist.

[paulsy]

"The terrorism we experience is a direct result of our being there in the first place."

Oh please PLEASE PLEASE educate yourself. Please. Wahabbis have been dead set on destroying everything the 1700s. You thought Nazism was bad, just give THESE folks some power. Saudi Arabia wanted to protect itself from radical islam dating way back, so they (among other things) started pumping money into those madrasses. These radicals have hated everyone who weren't like them - including other muslims - for centuries.

In fact, various groups of Muslims have been going after Christians since 700 AD when they took Algiers.

These most recent attacks are a direct result of their historical hatred of us; they've been brainwashed into hating us by the madrasses funded by Saudi oil money. Giving in because we're afraid of pissing them off, as Spain did, is a deadly strategy. We tried the "nice" approach in the 1990s and we still got 911. They are invasive and viral, and throughout history, the only way to stop them has been to kill them. Unfortunately, the Spain socialist leader has done exactly the wrong thing, as have a lot of people in Spain who put him in power.

So please, you and your liberal friends, remove your nose from that foul smelling Chomsky book long enough to learn some objective truth, or you might be in for a real sore life someday.